T-Dongle-S3 USB dongle combines ESP32-S3 wireless MCU with optional color display

LilyGO T-Dongle-S3 is a USB dongle based on ESP32-S3 dual-core microcontroller with WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity, a microSD card slot, as well as an optional 0.96-inch color display.

You may remember the company launched the T-Dongle ESP32-S2 last spring, and I first thought it was an update to ESP32-S3, but the new T-Dongle-S3 has quite more compact design and a smaller set of features that makes it suitable for data logging and displaying basic information over a wireless connection.

T-Dongle-S3 ESP32-S3 USB dongle

T-Dongle ESP32-S2 development board specifications:

  • Wireless SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3 with
    • Dual-core 32-bit Xtensa LX7 microcontroller up to 240MHz
    • RISC-V ULP Co-processor
    • 512KB SRAM
    • 2.4GHz Wifi 4 (802.11b/g/n)
    • Bluetooth 5.0 BLE + Mesh
  • Storage
    • 4 MB flash (or 16MB flash depending on where you look)
    • MicroSD card socket cleverly “hidden” under the USB connector
  • Display – Optional 0.96-inch 65K color IPS LCD (ST7735 SPI controller) with 160 x 80 resolution
  • USB – 1x USB Type-A male port for power and programming
  • Antenna – Ceramic antenna
  • Misc – Boot button, RGB LED
  • Power Supply – 5V via USB male port
  • Dimensions –  58.6 x 17.9 x 8.7 mm

T-Dongle-S3 pinout diagramThe company provides samples for the Arduino IDE/PlatformIO that include the factory testing program checking out the display, microSD card, and WiFi, as well as Arduino sketches to test the TFT display and use the dongle as a mass storage device. Some MicroPython code is also available, but mostly for the display with samples to display text, sprites, a clock, and some simple games. You’ll find those together with the PDF schematic on GitHub.

LilyGO is selling the T-Dongle-S3 on Aliexpress for $14.98 without the display, and $15.98 with it.

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4 Replies to “T-Dongle-S3 USB dongle combines ESP32-S3 wireless MCU with optional color display”

  1. This format could be perfect for Home Assistant’s Bluetooth proxy function.
    If only it could run ESPHome

    1. Absolutely no reason that it shouldn’t. ESPHome supports the ESP32S3 as well as the sT7735 display controller.

    2. The esphome docs list the following for the esp32 platform:

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